Wholly New...

I settle in to write the story. Hang its bones with flesh, fat, "miraculous organs." I wrap winter around me like a blanket--white snow a buffer against all sound, all activity. I am this story. I learn to love the winter. Love the cold that leaves me leaning into these interiors, these warm pockets of living. I lean, too, into my language, each syllable a gift, a "new arrival" that means the story grows. The story goes. It becomes me.

I look around me and there is this difference: I have finally learned patience. After yearning so long, just like that. I arrive at stillness. My longing is a soft undercurrent, no longer a raging river tearing at roots and tumbling stones as it spills itself headlong toward the sea. Oh. What sweet respite from wanting.

I learn to sustain this light, let it burn down slowly, the thin and enfolding flame of a candle. "I can see for miles, miles, miles," he croons. Indeed, the distance is great.

I determine to craft, draw in the lines of the lungs, the veins and arteries. The heart itself I will endow with muscular pulsing. Life. I will line the flesh with marbled fat, just enough, and enclose it with the largest organ of all. When I stand it up, it will breathe, and I will recognize it as my twin. Beauty I never believed in.